It’s Professor Dave, let’s learn how to use questo and quello.
Let’s say you want to buy a book.
You might say: I am buying a book.
But which book?
I am buying this book.
Or perhaps: I am buying that book.
In the first version, you are buying any book.
In the second version you are buying a specific book nearby.
In the third version you are buying a specific book that is far away.
This and that are demonstrative adjectives, which comes from the Latin verb which means
to show.
The forms of these adjectives are not very difficult, so let’s start with the word
questo, which means this.
There are forms for masculine and feminine, and within those categories we need a form
that precedes nouns that begin with a consonant, and a form that precedes nouns that begin
with a vowel.
Then we have all those options in their plural form.
So let’s fill in this chart.
Questo specchio.
If the noun starts with a vowel, it becomes quest’ with an apostrophe, so we can smoothly
link the words.
Now for the plural forms.
This will be used for any masculine plural noun no matter what letter it starts with.
Again, this is the only form, no matter what the plural noun.
Now we do the same for quello, which means that.
This one is a little trickier, because it needs to follow the use of the definite article,
just like the adjective bello, which we have already seen.
This means we need a masculine singular form for nouns that begin with a consonant, a special
sound, or a vowel, then feminine singular forms, and then all of the same for the plural forms.
For masculine singular, if the noun begins with a consonant we have quel.
There are no special sounds in the feminine, so we skip that one.
And this stays the same regardless of the plural noun.
If these words are used without any nouns, they are called pronouns.
When used as pronouns, there are fewer forms, because they don’t need to comply with the
first letter of the following word, as there is none.
These are easy to use in simple situations.
Lastly, let’s note that questo can be used as a contraction in certain expressions.
Let’s say you want to refer to this morning.
Instead of questa mattina, you drop the first half of questa and put the words together.
Similarly, we can have stasera, and stanotte.
These only refer to the current day, and not any other day.
You could also say stavolta, meaning this time.
Let’s check comprehension.